The story
1960–1989
The university was founded on 5 February 1960. Its stated purpose was to help developing nations. Many students from developed countries also attended the university. On 22 February 1961, the university was named Patrice Lumumba University after the Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba, who had been killed in a coup that January. The stated purpose for establishing the university was to give young people from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, especially from low-income families, an opportunity to be educated and to become qualified specialists. The organizations mentioned as founders of the university are the All-Union Central Soviet of Trade Unions, the Soviet Afro-Asian Solidarity Committee, and the Soviet Associations Union of Friendship and Intercultural Relationship.
Sergey Vasilievich Rumiantsev, Doctor of Engineering, was the university's first Rector. He remained its Rector until 1970. In 1960, Russian language studies for international students started at the preparatory Faculty. On 1 September, Russian language studies were introduced at the six main faculties of the PFU (Engineering faculty, Faculty of History and Philology, Medical Faculty, Agricultural Faculty, Faculty of Science, Faculty of Law and Economics). The first 288 students from 47 countries graduated in 1965. Around that time, international construction teams started to appear, and the first student teams of KVN were organized.
Vladimir Frantsevich Stanis became the second Rector of the PFU. He proclaimed the "cult of knowledge" at the university, heading it from 1970 to 1993. In 1972, Stanis proceeded to extend the duration of studies, which until then were shorter, along the lines of mainstream Soviet universities. At the Faculty of Medicine, for instance, the duration of studies was extended from five to six years. By 1975, the university had more than 5,600 graduates, 4,250 people from 89 foreign countries.
1990–2019
The university's name was changed to the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia on 5 February 1992 by the RF Government, the university's founder. The university's current Russian name is "Российский университет дружбы народов" which could be translated as "The Peoples' Friendship University of Russia" or, more directly, as "Russian University of the Friendship of Nations". The English-language version of the university's website, however, uses the name "RUDN University", with the acronym RUDN derived from the Russian name transliterated into English ("Rossiiskii Universitet Druzhby Narodov"). Nonetheless, it remains most common in English to use the name "Peoples' Friendship University of Russia" or the abbreviation "PFUR".
From 1993 to 1998, PFUR was headed by Vladimir Filippov, a 1973 graduate of Patrice Lumumba PFU. From 1998 to 2005, PFUR was directed by Dmitry Petrovich Bilibin, a graduate of Patrice Lumumba PFU. He was acting Rector until 2004 and was elected Rector of the university in 2004. Filippov was reelected Rector of the PFUR on 4 March 2005 and has headed the university since then. The 1990s saw the creation of new faculties and Institutes: the Ecological faculty, the Faculty of Economics, the faculty of Law, the Philological faculty, the faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, the faculty of Refresher Training for Health Care Professionals, the Institute of Foreign Languages, the Institute of Distance Learning, the Institute of Hospitality Business and Tourism, and the Institute of Gravitation and Cosmology.
More than 77,000 graduates work in 170 countries, among them more than 5,500 holders of PhD and Doctorate degrees. Lecturers train specialists in 62 majors and lines of study. More than 29,000 graduate and postgraduate students from 140 countries studied at the university as of 2014. They represented more than 150 nations of the world. It has a team of 4,500 employees, among them 2,826 teachers. Foreign and Russian political and public figures, scholars, and scientists have become PFUR Emeritus Professors.
2020–present
The university and 11 others from Russia were suspended from the European University Association (EUA) following support for the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine by its president Vladimir Mikhailovich Filippov in a statement issued by the Russian Union of Rectors (RUR) in March 2022. The EUA justified the suspension on the support expressed in the statement, stating said universities were "opposed to the European values that they committed to when joining EUA". In early March 2022, open letters were published calling for an end to the war in Ukraine on behalf of employees, students, and graduates of several Russian universities, including the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia.
From Wikipedia’s article on Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University of Russia, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3